So I thought I would give a bit of shock by having someone else speak my thoughts about piracy. The set up was to make it look like my ideas were appropriated without my permission. Thank you to my wife for helping me out by reading for everyone and accepting being voluntold to help me out with this project.
Here is the text she read:
A key point I took from Lawrence Lessig’s TED talk was the how we are moving, or have moved, from a read-only society to one that is read-write. I felt this was an especially articulate way to speak about the shift from consumer to producer that has come up in previous weeks. This is a marker for our post-digital world and a revolt of sorts is occurring. The standard bearers are artists and creators, who have historically had a better thumb on the pulse of culture. And another group who is in the ranks are the native speakers of this digital [re]mix language, the children and adolescents. While the tools needed to appropriate and blend have become democratized, those in positions of power attempt to deny access to the means of creation. They criminalize the efforts of these native speakers to express themselves in their common tongue…re[mixing] pieces or artifacts of culture.
While the artists and creators participate in acts of civil disobedience such as Creative Commons to circumvent the shackles of copyright, the youth tend to rebel, rejecting the entire social structure. For them though, the stakes may be higher. They are being denied the words they speak with, their very language of origin, by threats and intimidation in the form of cease and desist orders and threats of legal action for copyright infringement.
If we return to an idea, from the previous weeks, that humans and technology are in interactive relationships, each influencing and changing because of the relationship, then we can see youth have a separate culture. And their culture has all the complexity of greater society with its own subcultures and idiosyncrasies. Still, language is a unifying element of all cultures, including theirs. Yet with copyright enforcement, they are told they are committing a crime, and even potentially that their existence is illegal. They are forced to either assimilate or live against the law, simply because they want to speak their native language and participate in their culture. Is this a reason to deem someone an outlaw?
Another issue with the concept of copyright, one common sense revolts against, is that culture can be owned. Culture, or the packets of culture, referred to as memes by Susan Blackmore act in much the way genes do. They are self-replicating. And as mutations occur they are passed to the next generation in an evolutionary manner. So if we talk about culture in the broader sense as replicating and advancing, similar to life forms rather than inanimate objects, it makes no sense that a person could own that process any more than one could own evolution.
Authorship is an artifact of the marketplace according to Renee Hobbs, but it is difficult to see how this works outside of the marketplace. If authorship, and [re]mix even, is viewed as an artifact of culture rather than of the marketplace, we then have an interesting dilemma. It highlights the narrow view of appropriation of culture as theft or piracy. And it equally highlights how authorship actually functions. Borrowed material is often leveraged for effective persuasion. Hints to collective memory, shared understanding, and historical events…culture in essence, have a great ability to increase the sense of connection and enhance the interaction of speaker and audience, regardless of the form of text. It is possible to consider authorship as a construct that no longer helps society, especially if it sets us up for criminalizing an entire generation.
Instead, loosen the shackles and expand the vocabulary the youth have access to. Creative Commons helps with this, but even more I think the recent releases of archives from libraries and museums into the public domain have a greater effect. The number of cultural artifacts available to a new generation to find their voice is astounding. Let’s listen up rather than trying to gag them. Even better, try to speak with them on their terms rather than insisting they use our dying means of communication.
Please return to the blog post to comment.
Creating Dissonance 